EverHub — Empowering Users in a Multichain World
Everest has three main goals: to improve users’ control of their identity information, to enable better control over their finances, and to make both processes simple to understand and accomplish. To accomplish these goals, we need to go beyond bridges and to a world in which chains are infrastructure “that just work.”
We developed EverID to empower users to record and share pieces of identity information, including documents, statuses, events and an ever expanding list of data and data feeds. In order to maximize the value of users’ EverIDs, Everest, with help from our partner RelayChain, built a system to facilitate the flow of the core Everest tokens to other EVM blockchains.
This means that our identity and financial services functionality can flow across networks attached to our Hub and Spokes model. When most people speak of transferring assets between blockchains they speak of bridges — however — the issue with bridges is that they lack any form of coordination — the 21 bridges off of Manhattan are completely independent from each other. The Everest system is more like the hub and spokes of a bicycle wheel — each network is reached by a spoke, all coordinated and controlled by EverHub. The Hub and Spokes metaphor is more applicable as the amount of information exchanged increases and the nature of the communications changes.
The EverHub architecture opens capabilities so that when the ID token flows onto another network like Polygon, our identity verification, KYC and identity sharing services are now available there as well. When our CRDT token (representing ANY global fiat currency) flows onto another network, it is then able to be incorporated into other financial service protocols and new DApps. EverHub opens communications, allowing it to keep track of tokens across networks.
Why did we build our own bridge rather than relying on others? If you want a future in which tokens, tokenized identity data, and communication with user-control are paramount, a new architecture is required. This communications relay is critical and necessitated the Hub and Spokes architecture. In typical bridge implementations, when a token is bridged onto another network, there is no further communication between the asset and the issuer because the object that the user is holding is actually a different asset than the one bridged. It was either minted or withdrawn from reserve when given to the user.
The EverHub architecture solves these limitations with built-in communication and inventory. An example of this is the sharing of identity information. When a user shares identity information with an Everest INFO-Token, that token is able to communicate with the Everest servers whether it is on the Everest network or on another connected network. That communication can be as simple as providing a Zero-Knowledge-Proof of user data, or something as sensitive as linking to a user document or government ID. Killer features inherent in this design are (a) granularly sharing identity data, and (b) being notified of who and when data was viewed — thus opening up the ability to monetize one’s data.
In order to ensure that the communication is faithfully and completely communicated “all the way through,” we have paved our own route with our Hub & Spokes, and we will continue to connect to other EVM networks that our community values in the future. These feature sets, the road less traveled, achieve our goals, vision — and make all the difference.
